Appear/Disappear

I am a bad blogger.  I appear on stage with a ton of gusto about blogging and then disappear on you.  Shame on me.

While my mother always taught me to never devalue an apology with an excuse…I do have a good one.  My best friend had an extreme emergency and I spent most of Tuesday with her helping her through it, then all of Wednesday dealing with emotional aftermath on my own, and then all of yesterday making up for being physically and emotionally absent from my home and kids for two days.

BUT NOW I AM BACK!!!

While we have had some crazy emotional up and downs in the past 4 months, this week was the kicker when it came to dealing with emotional eating. I am the ‘get up and do something about it’ type and when there is nothing to do but sit and wait I become the ‘stuff as much crap into your mouth until you are sick’ type.  I look a smidge like this:

Except he has far better make-up than I.

I knew when I got the call at 3:30am it was going to be a bad day, so I stuffed a Luna bar and WW snack bar in my purse along with my normal lunch so that I had healthier options to go to when the cravings started.  This consideration for my bad eating habits is new and a huge signal of how far I have come.  Over the past 4 months I have listened to my body and felt around for my triggers and stressors and now I can accommodate.  I am happy to say I was able to get through the emotional mess with minimal over eating. YAY FOR ME!

Ironically, the topic on binge eating episodes came up in a conversation with my daughter Serena.  She was having a bad day and was craving some sort of fast food.  I declined driving her to get said food and she got very upset and said that this diet would never work if she could never have a French fry again.  I explained that she was free to have whatever food she wants in moderation but she needs to make sure she is eating it for the right reasons.  I am more likely to accommodate an off diet splurge if it is a natural/healthy craving.  If my craving is more along the lines of “OMG! I am so tired/stressed/angry/sad/depressed, I am going to kill someone unless I stuff a big cheeseburger down my throat” I am less likely to oblige.

The funniest part of the whole thing is that I rarely if ever indulge in my cravings, BUT, to avoid doing so I eat what I consider healthier snacks. Unfortunately I think it would have been more diet friendly to just stick with my original craving:

Craving - Peanut Butter Twix = 8 points

Food eaten to avoid craving

Granola bar = 4 points

Banana = 0 points

Hummus & Pretzels = 4 points

½ oz cheese with 1oz turkey = 2 points

Few more pretzels = 1-2 points

As you can see… I would have been better off with the Twix.  Some might say that option two, while more points had better foods and was probably way more filling but in all honesty, I wasn’t even hungry at this time.  I have a pretty strict eating schedule and when I stick to it I rarely get hungry.   On occasions where I do, a banana usually covers it.  The fact was that I was craving something and in my attempt to fill said craving with other things I created a monster.

I am not saying that every time you have a craving for greasy/sugary unhealthy food that one should indulge, I just think that sometimes we may cause more harm than good then completely denying ourselves what we want all the time.

I was hoping to have a temptation free weekend as we had no functions, dinner parties, birthday parties, or other such food related things going on but alas, I am not so lucky.  Best Friend mentioned above is coming over tonight and requested that I teach her how to make my yummy Chicken Tetrazzini.  Just looking at the recipe card makes me loose all 49 of my weekly point allowance.  I have grandiose dreams of accepting a small portion and then filling myself on spinach salad and staying with my daily points….keep your fingers crossed.

And now for something completely different: